Scooter Jungle

For the disabled, getting around is always a challenge. San Antonio’s surfeit of e-scooters has made matters worse. Riders ditch the machines on sidewalks and in curb ramps, posing a danger to the blind and wheelchair-bound.

Scooter Jungle

For the disabled, getting around is always a challenge. San Antonio’s surfeit of e-scooters has made matters worse. Riders ditch the machines on sidewalks and in curb ramps, posing a danger to the blind and wheelchair-bound.

Lorne Self wobbled methodically in his motorized wheelchair across a landscape of cracked and tilting sidewalks, making his way back to a downtown nursing home off San Pedro Avenue.

As blues man Johnnie Taylor sang from his iPhone, Self railed against the neighborhood’s dangerous traffic. An auto collision almost a decade ago ruptured his lower vertebrae, leaving the former Highlands High School basketball player with rods in his neck and gnarled hands bent almost into fists. But with his wheels and some courage, Self, 57, had regained a semblance of freedom.

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Bruce Selcraig has been an investigative reporter for Sports Illustrated, a U.S. Senate investigator and a freelance writer for national publications. He joined the San Antonio Express-News in 2015 and currently covers transportation. | BSelcraig@express-news.net

Or so he thought until last summer, when hundreds, then thousands, of rented electric scooters appeared unexpectedly in downtown San Antonio. Riders leave them strewn across sidewalks and curb ramps, merely annoying the able-bodied but creating profound obstacles for disabled people trying to get to work, go to the store or just live their lives.

“They’re a huge problem for us,” said Self, who has been married 28 years and requires a licensed attendant to get through daily chores. “When they’re lying down, we can’t get around them. If I have to, I will tip them over. Or move them off with my chair, like a snowplow.”

Lorne Self, 57, who broke his lower vertebrae in a car accident, sits at Crockett Park last month. He said scooters discarded on sidewalks often give him trouble as he navigates his way around town. (Billy Calzada /Staff Photographer | Express-News)

From the moment they appeared in cities across the country, the business model for electric scooters has depended on riders’ abandoning the machines wherever the ride ends. Users unlock scooters with a cell phone app, put $1 on their credit card plus 15 to 30 cents per minute to ride, and routinely ignore city rules against dumping the vehicles in the curb cuts that make sidewalk wheelchair use possible.

San Antonio’s new ban on riding scooters on sidewalks — if it’s enforced — will only partially restore a path to a freer life for people with disabilities. Scooters are still legal to park on the sidewalk itself, and the city’s “light touch” preference for warnings and education over police ticketing and confiscation leave the disabled skeptical that much will change.

Urban commentators might curse scooters as a metaphor for a hurried, narcissistic age, but disabled people generally see the glut of abandoned vehicles as a physical affront.

“We’ve spent 30 years making sidewalks accessible,” said Curt Decker, executive director of the Washington-based National Disability Rights Network, referring to passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. “And then overnight we’re forced into asking cities, ‘Why have you allowed this to happen without thinking of their impact?’”

The problem is especially acute and visible in San Antonio, which U.S. Census figures show has the nation’s second highest rate of residents with “ambulatory difficulty” — 9.5 percent of San Antonians ages 35 to 64, or about 100,000 people. Among the 10 largest U.S. cities, only Philadelphia had a higher rate.

Scooters parked on a sidewalk along Commerce Street near Navarro Street last month.

(Billy Calzada /Staff Photographer | Express-News)

More than annoyance

Blind people feel especially harassed by the two-wheeled whippets, said Sandy Merrill, CEO of San Antonio-based Guide Dogs of Texas, which trains service dogs for the vision-impaired.

“It’s difficult enough dealing with what’s in front of you,” Merrill said. “But now our dogs and people have to deal with something almost silent zipping behind them at 15 miles an hour. I wish young people would think about how they’re using them.”

Athalie Malone, co-chair of the city’s Disability Access Advisory Committee, suffers from diabetic retinopathy, a condition in which blood vessels in the eye swell and leak, impairing vision. Living on full disability after a career in business administration, she relies on a white cane to get around.

Malone, 54, twice has tripped over scooters splayed in the middle of downtown sidewalks on streets such as Broadway, Navarro, Market and Houston. Her first mishap was in February, when she was walking on Market toward the Bexar County courthouse and her cane slid beneath the steering column of a discarded scooter lying on its side.

Athalie Malone, who is blind, encounters scooters on a sidewalk along Market Street on the way to a city government meeting. She chairs San Antonio's disability access advisory committee and says she has twice tripped over scooters downtown.

(Billy Calzada /Staff Photographer | Express-News)

“I didn’t sense it quickly enough, tripped and, fortunately, just fell to my knees and got bruised a little,” said Malone, a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands who has lived in San Antonio for 39 years. “But a fall like that can be so unsettling to blind people. Many of us have had to develop courage to go outside and be independent.”

Malone, who said she was speaking as a private citizen and not for the disability committee, said the fear of being hit by a moving scooter is even worse. “They will run you down in a hot minute,” she said. “It’s not the companies’ fault. It’s the riders. They have no patience. A sighted person can get out of the way, but they’ll come right beside a blind person and holler at the last moment or tap you quickly and this throws your balance off. It’s disorienting. It scares you.”

Sometimes it’s just about maintaining your dignity in a wheelchair.

Anguletta Neal, 50, has relied on one for a decade as a result of a car wreck and medical problems. Resting at a Sonic drive-in off San Pedro with a large limeade one humid morning, she said it’s an ordeal to catch the bus to get to the store or see a doctor. She detests scooter riders who think their mobility needs outweigh hers.

“I was at this VIA stop on Houston Street,” said Neal, a former cabdriver, “and the bus wheelchair ramp couldn’t come down to the curb because there were scooters. Two men had to come off the bus to move them for me. It sucks. I’m already fat and in a wheelchair. It was embarrassing.”

Lorne Self, who lives in a nursing home in downtown San Antonio, said abandoned e-scooters create an obstacle course for people in wheelchairs. “When they’re lying down, we can’t get around them,” he said.

(Billy Calzada | Express-News)

Athalie Malone, who is blind, walks by a scooter parked on a sidewalk along Navarro Street on her way to a city government meeting last month. Malone is on the selection committee that will determine which e-scooter companies will be awarded lucrative long-term city contracts, and her left arm is currently in a sling from her third downtown stumble this year over an abandoned scooter.

(Billy Calzada /Staff File Photo | Express-News)

The city’s plan

John Jacks, director of San Antonio’s Center City Development and Operations Department and the city’s de facto scooter czar, sounds sympathetic to the complaints of disabled citizens, but is loath to criticize the scooter companies or call for aggressive policing of a breezy business culture more determined to ask for forgiveness than for permission.

The city won’t create the rules designed to change that culture. It has asked the companies to do it themselves, by submitting detailed proposals for bringing order to the scooter scrum. By October, the city will cut the number of permitted scooter firms from six to three and reduce their fleets of dockless vehicles from a total of 16,000 to 5,000. Jacks said the city’s request-for-proposals process offers the reward of a city contract to the three companies with the best ideas for reducing clutter and rider misbehavior.

“Our number one concern is the ability of all people to navigate the sidewalks safely,” Jacks said. Correcting the problem, he added, will be done mostly by creating incentives “for good behavior versus bad. It’s putting the burden on the companies for addressing the problem.”

Jacks said he had consulted the disabled community about the scooter roll-out and its concerns will be “embedded” in the process by having Malone, a former president of the National Federation for the Blind, on the selection committee.

The city’s scooter ordinance, thrown together last year to govern a six-month tryout of the new technology, contains rules against parking within a certain distance of curb ramps and other structures, but Jacks conceded that few, if any, riders actually know that.

“This is all still evolving,” Jacks said. “If the Council still doesn’t think it’s working, we may have to have more restrictive regulations.”

San Antonio Police confirm that they haven’t impounded any scooters in 2019, choosing instead to alert the scooter companies, call 311 or tidy up the sidewalks themselves.

“Sometimes I’ll just move them off to the side on the curb,” said SAPD Capt. Chris Benavides, the department’s head of traffic and special events.

Officers have given out 438 warnings, he said, but have written only 80 citations for scooter riders since last August, a period in which renters took nearly two million rides, according to city records. This month, SAPD deployed three overtime officers per day, seven days a week, to focus on downtown scooter enforcement.

“I like the ‘soft touch’ to scooter enforcement, if that’s what you want to call it,” Benavides said. “Our biggest problem is just educating people, especially the tourists.”

Disability activists complain that, in the rush to adapt to the new technology, their most basic rights have been ignored.

To blind pedestrians, especially, electric scooters — gangly L-shaped contraptions made of carbon-fiber, plastic and metal — present a unique obstacle because they’re not predictable or stationary, such as a fire hydrant or parked car.

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Reporter Bruce Selcraig details how San Antonio's growing e-scooter culture creates frightening hazards for the disabled. on the EN-Depth podcast.

“We’re used to dealing with odd things, like utility pole wires and those foldable placards a restaurant might put outside,” Malone said. “But we have clues to expect those. Scooters can be anywhere. Lying down, upright, speeding behind you, and because of their odd shape, your white cane may be telling you you’re past the problem and then you’ll catch your toe or the hem of your pants on a wheel or a handlebar.”

Guide dogs are amazingly adept at dealing with human and structural oddities — people dressed as donuts or popping out of manholes, or spooky wicker reindeer at Christmas time. But Merrill, of Guide Dogs of Texas, said that when dogs see scooters piled on the sidewalks near an obstruction, some will stop, as if thinking, “Can both of us squeeze by?”

“The dog indicates you might have to squeeze through a gap and you catch your foot on the scooter’s frame,” Merrill said. “Or the dog thinks he can’t get you through the gap, so she indicates you should head to the street, and that’s extremely dangerous, especially in mid-sidewalk.”

And she agrees with Malone — a moving scooter is much worse. “When they’re coming from behind you, the dog has no way of knowing which way to go, so your safety is completely in the hands of that kid,” Merrill said.

Malone said she was fine with the city’s announcement that it will give riders a month’s grace period to adapt to its new ban on riding on sidewalks. “But if you want to see compliance,” she said, “you must fine the companies. Then they will make sure the scooters stay in the street. If you just wait for the companies to come up with some innovative idea, they’ll take the path that makes them the most money.”

Six e-scooter companies now operate in San Antonio. City officials plan to cut that to three by October and the number of scooters from 16,000 to 5,000. Officials say the winning firms will be those that offer the best ideas for reducing rider misbehavior and scooter clutter of the kind Adam Boffa, above, encountered recently in the Southtown area. (Kin Man Hui /Staff Photographer | Express-News)

Disabled ‘an afterthought’

Flouting local law is hardly unusual for companies whose favorite self-description is “disruptive.” Two of the biggest e-scooter companies, Lime and Bird, each valued at around $2 billion, have been served with dozens of municipal cease and desist orders for unpermitted dumping of their vehicles and other infractions from San Francisco to Auburn, Alabama.

Where riders have been seriously injured or killed, the companies are often sued, including in at least four cases in Texas.

A federal class action suit in California asserts that e-scooters have taken over public sidewalks, forcing people with disabilities “to either put their physical safety at risk or just stay home.” The defendants include Bird, Lime, Razor and the city of Dan Diego. Similar litigation has yet to be filed in Texas. Click to read the document.

In California, at least a dozen disabled people have joined federal class action lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act, targeting scooter companies such as Lime and Bird and cities they accuse of complicity in denying their right to move around freely. Plaintiffs include amputees and paraplegics.

The suits ask for monetary damages and a court order barring the companies from allowing their machines to block sidewalks, curb ramps and crosswalks.

The cities and the companies “have a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship” that lets cities abdicate their responsibility for improving public transportation, the lawsuit states.

Athalie Malone, who is blind, walks along Market Street on her way to a government meeting last month. She chairs San Antonio's disability access advisory committee and says she has twice tripped over scooters downtown. less

Athalie Malone, who is blind, walks along Market Street on her way to a government meeting last month. She chairs San Antonio's disability access advisory committee and says she has twice tripped over scooters ... more

Photo: Billy Calzada /Staff Photographer

Photo: Billy Calzada /Staff Photographer

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Athalie Malone, who is blind, walks along Market Street on her way to a government meeting last month. She chairs San Antonio's disability access advisory committee and says she has twice tripped over scooters downtown. less

Athalie Malone, who is blind, walks along Market Street on her way to a government meeting last month. She chairs San Antonio's disability access advisory committee and says she has twice tripped over scooters ... more

Photo: Billy Calzada /Staff Photographer

A 'dump-and-run' e-scooter culture creates frightening hazards for the disabled

The scooter companies have not yet filed a response to the suits. Outside the legal arena, the firms defend themselves by essentially saying they are no more responsible for their customers’ behavior than rental car companies are responsible for drunks behind the wheel. They point to their corporate websites and cell phone apps, which instruct riders to obey local laws, park scooters appropriately and wear helmets.

Joe Deshotel, Lime’s Austin-based manager for government relations and community affairs, said the firm has done in-house training for employees on disability issues. That included a trip to Austin’s Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, where Lime officials learned how to navigate around prone scooters using white canes.

“The industry has barely been around two years,” Deshotel said in an interview. “The culture is changing. We also just overlook a lot of bad behavior with cars, like running red lights or speeding. People pay attention to scooters because they’re new.”

San Antonio-based Blue Duck Scooters has teams of workers making hourly efforts “to ensure rights-of-way are not being blocked,” said its CEO, Eric Bell.

No federal ADA scooter lawsuit appears to have been filed in Texas, where many lawyers believe the U.S. Fifth Circuit’s conservative appeals court judges are skeptical of class action cases and sympathetic to corporations.

What people think

The city of San Antonio attracted 4,666 people to click through an online survey about e-scooters (including 43 percent who said they would never ride one). The survey asked their reactions to several statements. Here is a sampling, with the percentage of respondents who “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with each statement.

72 percent – “Riders do not obey traffic laws”

71 percent – “I have concerns about dockless vehicle safety”

64.5 percent – “E-scooters are often parked in my way”

64 percent – “Dockless vehicles are in prohibited areas” such as the River Walk and Alamo Plaza

Respondents were also asked if they wanted more or fewer dockless vehicles in San Antonio.

More: 16 percent

Fewer: 60 percent

Same: 22 percent

No opinion: 2 percent

Source: Dockless Vehicle Community Engagement Report, Center City Development & Operations Department, city of San Antonio. The unscientific survey was conducted in English and Spanish from Jan. 22 to May 8 through the city’s public comment portal, SASpeakup.com.

“I actively try to discourage people from using Texas courts for class actions,” said Stephen Gardner, consumer litigation coordinator for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. “I would file in California.”

Lia Davis, an Austin-based attorney for Disability Rights Texas, believes cities might face more litigation by disabled people because they’re not doing enough to regulate scooters. But she was unconvinced that ADA class actions were the best approach.

“The companies have the ability to ban customers from their apps if they don’t obey regulations,” Davis said. “And the cities can ban scooters altogether. But what I think all this speaks to is that people with disabilities are an afterthought.”

Decker, the National Disability Rights Network director, said scooter companies might be more effectively restrained by changing city ordinances and “embarrassing them publicly.” Some judges might not consider scooters littering sidewalks “a big enough detriment to society,” Decker said. “Probably a lot of people will have to get hurt before something happens. I would prefer that cities just build (tougher regulation) into their contracts from the get-go.”

City attorney Andy Segovia said he doesn’t see any court holding San Antonio responsible for scooters run amok.

“I don’t expect litigation,” he said. “And I think we could show we’ve tried to work with the companies. We could defend ourselves.”

Malone said she understands that scooters fill a need for those who don’t own cars or who need to run quick errands downtown without worrying about parking.

“But the city just got overwhelmed” by the dump-and-run approach of the scooter companies, she added. “The city wanted to be progressive … but instead of researching them, they just opened the door. And now they’re having to play catch-up.”

Adam Boffa, who relies on a wheelchair for mobility, and his pet Dachshund navigate past a collection of scooters in the Southtown area last month.. Boffa is exasperated with scooters and bicycles parked along sidewalks and ramps. The disabled community, especially people in wheelchairs and the blind, often feel their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act have been ignored by scooter companies and cities that permit their operations. (Kin Man Hui /Staff Photographer | Express-News)

Design by Joy-Marie Scott.

A version of this article will appear in print on July 7, 2019, on Page A1 of the San Antonio Express-News. | Today's Paper